2014 Jaguar F-type V-8 S

Second place: Hot Seats.

While Americans were chopping, channeling, doo-wopping, and liking Ike, Jaguar was busy winning Le Mans with its C- and D-type racers. In the ’60s, Jaguar’s E-type defined sports-car style. After a four-decade hiatus, Jaguar is again building a knockout of a sports car. Staring isn’t enough; the F-type’s curves beg to be washed. It looks especially good from behind, yet the design is free of gaudiness or vulgarity.

Jag offers three engine options: a 340-hp supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, a 380-hp version of that V-6, and a 495-hp supercharged 5.0-liter V-8. An intercooler is standard. When it came to choosing the right foil for the new Corvette, we selected the supercharged V-8. Hot rods don’t have V-6s (cough, Plymouth Prowler), and here we wanted performance parity between our two roadsters, even though it comes at the expense of price ­parity. Opting for the V-8 pushes the Jag’s starting price by $11,000 to $92,895, which is more than $15,000 over a loaded Stingray convertible. Our test example pushed even further with the $1925 Extended Leather pack and the $1200 Meridian sound system, right past common sense and to an as-tested price of $100,370.

At the test track, the Jaguar pushed us hard into its thinly padded leather seat. Acceleration to 60 matched the Corvette’s 3.7-second time with the F-type slightly pulling away past 100 mph. In addition to posting a higher power rating, the Jag’s V-8 also has more low-end torque than the Vette, which made launching the car without sending the tires up in smoke a bit of a challenge.

An eight-speed automatic is the only transmission available. Fortunately, it’s phenomenal and utterly convinced that it’s a dual-clutch automatic. It cracks off shifts without delay. Paddles behind the steering-wheel spokes call up the right gear instantly and the revs match perfectly on downshifts.

You’ll find yourself aimlessly dropping down a gear or two just to hear the cackling, metallic rap of the F-type’s four-pipe exhaust. It’s as loud and raucous as a Ferrari-built foghorn, likely to set off your neighbors’ car alarms. Then again, if you can afford this car, you probably don’t live very close to your neighbors.

We left suburbia and headed into the San Bernardino Mountains. The F-type shines bright on these canyon roads: There’s plenty of easily exploited grip, and the car locks into corners without any suspension squirminess or excessive body roll. Its steering efforts are marginally lighter than the Corvette’s, which helps hide the fact that the aluminum F-type weighs 464 pounds more than the aluminum-and-composite-plastic Chevy. Yet we only felt the Jag’s mass disadvantage and 52.5-percent front-weight bias in our slalom test. Through the cones, the F-type wasn’t quite as eager to turn as the Corvette. And once the nose was pointed, the rear tires would threaten to swing wide. It still managed a slalom speed of 48.3 mph, not far off the Corvette’s 48.7 mph.

The Jag’s nose heaviness can be blamed on its hulking supercharged DOHC V-8. Overhead cams, 32 valves, and a supercharger on top make for a bulkier engine than the 16-valve pushrod V-8 in the Chevy. The Jag’s engine forces a high hood and an equally high instrument panel, so visibility suffers slightly as you sit deep within the car’s black-leather cocoon. While you’re in there, you’ll notice that there’s not much room and that the touch-screen infotainment system appears to be from the year 2005.

We really liked this car’s steering and its playful exuberance, but the new Corvette nearly matches or beats the F-type everywhere, including price.

Verdict:

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